This disclosure relates generally to recommending content to online system users, and more specifically to identifying content items having relatively little interaction by users to other users.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users. Content provided to an online system by a user may be declarative information provided by a user, status updates, check-ins to locations, images, photographs, videos, text data, or any other information a user wishes to share with additional users of the online system. An online system may also generate content for presentation to a user, such as content describing actions taken by other users on the online system.
Many online systems recommend content to users based on interactions by other users with the content. For example, as users interact with a content item presented to them by the online system, the online system obtains information describing interactions by the users with the content item. Based on the interactions by users, the online system identifies other users likely to interact with the content item or who are likely to have an interest in the content item. This allows the online system to distribute the content item to users most likely to have an interest in the content item.
However, when an online system has received limited information describing interactions by users with a content item, the online system has difficulty identifying other users likely to have an interest in the content item. Certain types of content items obtained by the online system are more effective when presented to users in specific contexts, and if the online system has limited information about user interactions with the content item during one of the specific contexts, other users to whom the content item is likely to be relevant during the specific context are difficult to identify. For example, if a content item includes video for presentation live as the online system receives video, the online system has limited information describing user interaction with the live video, making it difficult for the online system to identify other users to whom the live video is likely to be relevant or interesting.